What Should I See at TIFF 2013?

I took a look and last year I saw 24 movies and reviewed 23 of them at the Toronto Film Festival (read my recap here). So I took a quick look at the lineup announced so far for this year’s festival to see what I may or may not be seeing and already my list of “must sees” is at 18 followed by three titles I really want to see. After that I have 18 films followed by six that are quite unlikely I’ll fit along with three I saw and already reviewed at Cannes earlier this year.

As is always the case with film festivals of this size, I simply have to weigh each film by measure of “importance” in the grand scheme of things, followed by those I’m most excited to see and after that is when I can begin poking around at some of the films that raise my curiosity, but may not be as noteworthy or headline grabbing.

In terms of the “must see” titles, you’ll recognize most if not all of them. The list is loaded with Oscar contenders and hopefuls as well as a couple I simply refuse to miss, specifically John Turturro‘s Fading Gigolo and Jonathan Glazer‘s Under the Skin.

My three “want to see” titles include the Cannes standout I missed, Blue is the Warmest Color, primarily because it’s three hours long, which makes it hard to fit into a festival schedule. Also Xavier Dolan‘s Tom at the Farm and Sean Durkin‘s Southcliffe starring Rory Kinnear, Sean Harris, Shirley Henderson, Anatol Yusef and Eddie Marsan. Unfortunately, Southcliffe is a 190-minute mini-series turned into a feature film. Unless these films manage to find a slot where they aren’t conflicting with other films I’ll probably have to miss them as it becomes a question of seeing two movies or four.

Below that is the next tier of films where you can see some solid talent lined up along with some interesting titles. I’m sure I’ll end up seeing about four of them or so with James Franco‘s Child of God and Alexandre Aja‘s Horns two that will likely bubble to the top of my list.

The “unlikely” batch includes four documentaries and a couple of titles I’m curious to see, but just aren’t necessarily must sees at the moment, but I’m going to make sure to keep them on my radar as a “just in case” because you never know how the schedule will shape out.

So this is what I’m looking at for now. You can browse the complete lineup right here if you think I’m missing anything that is a definite MUST SEE.

The 38th Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5 to 15, 2013 and I will be there through the 13th covering as many of these films as possible, but clearly it’s going to be tough.

NOTE: This isn’t a ranked list, the numbers are there simply as a head count.